But the door stays closed.
The machines keep beeping.
The priest continues his silent prayer.
And for the first time in a long time, I join him. It’s been so long that my words are a little rusty, but I bow my head and recite The Lord’s Prayer in a whisper.
Amen.
The priest raises his head when I finish. “Amen.”
“Hello, Father.” I dig around in my purse until I come up with his keys, a scrap of paper through the key ring with the address of Rome’s hotel. “Thanks for letting me borrow your car. You don’t have to worry about any more strange requests. I’m getting out of the city for a while.”
He considers the keys, slips them in his pocket. His eyes meet mine again. “Do you have protection?”
“What, like the pill?” Why not? He’s heard worse in the confessional booth. And I’m pretty sure my father is too comatose to hear our exchange.
The priest smiles slightly in amusement. “No,” he says. “Like a gun.”
My breath hitches. I wasn’t expecting that. “I did, but then the police arrested me and confiscated it. Pretty sure I’m not going to be able to buy another one so easily.”
The priest nods. He’s been completely sage and cool about this, and it gives me a thrill. Not a gross, inappropriate thrill—just a kind of pleasurable excitement. Maybe someone is looking down on me, after all.
One of the machines by my father’s bed whirs to life and the priest turns to glance at it. It’s just a warning that his saline IV bag needs to be replaced soon. In the process the priest bends over his black leather bag, neatly placed in the chair behind him, and takes out a gun.
He turns it around in his hand, casual as can be.
Finish me off. I’m done for.
Then he reaches back in and produces a box of ammo.
I can’t—I can’t. The gun is a real beauty. It’s black and bronze and huge. It could do real damage. Far more damage than the little starter gun I bought myself in the strip mall. This thing looks like it could blow somebody’s head clean off.
“It’s a Taran Tactical Glock .45,” says the priest. He comes around the end of the bed and passes it to me, handle first. “You’re going to have to be careful with it, especially if you’re used to shooting a .22. The recoil is brutal. The first time you shoot it, I wouldn’t recommend wearing a short skirt. It could knock you flat on the ground, and then you’d be in a situation.”
The priest resumes his position of prayer like he’s a robot shutting down. Is he? Or am I having a complete break from reality? I can’t be, because the gun feels so solid and real in my hand.
The longer I stand here gawking at this gun, the more likely it is that one of the staff will sound every alarm the hospital has to offer. I shove the ammo into my purse and rest the Glock next to it with as much care as I have time for.
Amen.
“Thank you, Father… I don’t even know your name.”
“Father Mateo,” he says.
“Thank you, Father Mateo.”
He smiles, the skin around his eyes crinkling a little. He looks forty at most, but his eyes tell a story of a life that has seen more than its fair share of pain.
I wonder if he sees something similar when he looks back at me.
“Be wary of who you trust,” the priest says, and it sounds exactly like another prayer. He glances at me from the corner of his eye. “I promise to watch over your father in your absence. Now get out of here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ROME
Cigarettes are the one good thing about being trapped in this fucking hotel room. Okay, two good things—the balcony is pretty nice, too. It’s a riot of green plants out here, everything wrought iron. It’s a small fucking miracle that my ankle monitor even lets me be out here at all–it certainly doesn’t let me edge a toe into the hallway outside my room, without letting off a series of warning beeps that gives me one minute to get back into the room or risk being arrested and causing my bail to be revoked.
Out here, I can pretend I’m here for no reason, watching the traffic go by. I can breathe in the fresh air (as fresh as the city air can be) and smoke cigarettes and drink the six-pack of Pepsi my lawyer so kindly stocked the minibar with. I can pretend that, at any moment, I could climb into one of those cars parked below and get the hell out of here. I can pretend that jumping off the balcony and splattering myself in the middle of the street doesn’t cross my mind ten times a day. The main reason I haven’t jumped is because it’s not a high enough fall to kill me. And also, I can’t leave Avery behind.
I can’t even leave the chance of Avery behind. That’s what she and I are, at this point. A chance. And not a very good chance, either. Watching her get hauled away in handcuffs made me sick. If I’d been eating, I would have lost my lunch. Luckily I have no appetite. I order room service and half the time the trays go away mostly full.
It’s a life of luxury.
I finish my cigarette and put one foot on the balcony. Tip my chair back a little bit. Almost far enough to fall. My jeans catch on the ankle monitor. I need another smoke to occupy my hands, to stop myself from ripping the damn thing apart with my bare hands. Of all the stupid shit I’ve done, that would probably be the worst error. There’s nobody here with a gun to my head, or a gun to Avery’s. There’s only an itch that grows hotter with every second my ankle is stuck with this monitor on it. That fucker who tightened it couldn’t even get his pinky finger between the strap and my skin. Pretty sure it’s not meant to be this tight, but so far, it hasn’t cut my circulation off completely. There’s just that itch, itch, itch. Like fire ants crawling around my lower leg, eating away at my skin, burrowing inside me, feasting on my flesh and blood.
Stop, I tell myself. Relax. Forget about it. Maybe stop drinking so much fucking caffeine. I look at the Pepsi can beside me, the third one I’ve downed since sitting out here, and vow to drink no more until tomorrow morning.
All I have to do is sit here and listen to the world. To the rumble of car engines and the birds in nearby trees. To the garbage floating down the street and catching on a lamppost. To the people down the hall, fucking loudly.
Okay, maybe not to those people.
A G63 detaches itself from the line of traffic and pulls to the curb in front of the hotel. This is what counts for interesting these days—seeing a car pull up and finding out whether they’ll check into the hotel as a guest, drop someone off, or deliver a package. I’m not complaining. It’s better than watching Avery and other women get tortured. It’s better than watching my back in the exercise yard inside the prison.
The sunglasses-wearing person in the car doesn’t come into the hotel.
Nope.
She looks straight up at my balcony. My heart skips several beats.
Avery? What’s she doing back here?
“This place is nothing but trouble,” I shout down to her.
“Get in, loser,” she yells from below. “We’re getting out of this damn city.”
And fuck me, I get up out of my seat. I don’t even fight her. Is it wrong? Yes. Will there be hell to pay? Yes. But the bigger truth, the one that takes reality by the neck and shoves it underwater, is that I need her like I need air and food. And at one point in that dank hole, I swore to myself that if I ever got out, I wasn’t going to waste my life anymore.
And I am sure as fuck wasting my life in this hotel room.
It takes fifteen seconds to shove my shit into a duffel bag. No alarm sounds when I open my hotel room door. Weird, but maybe there’s a time delay. They did say I have a full minute before the thing trips. Last time I tested it, the thing started giving me a warning immediately, but whatever. Maybe the alarm is silent now. I have no doubt that it’ll be screeching across the city on some cop’s desk. I keep my steps measured and calm all the way down the hall, all the way down to the first floor, and all the way across the lobby. The woman behind the counter doesn’t so much as look up.
Outside, the heat of the day hits me full force in a way that it didn’t on the balcony. It presses its palms down on my back and shoulders and rubs, letting me know it’s there. The city air is thick, the tall buildings all around stopping the breeze from the San Francisco Bay from touching anything here. I feel ten pounds heavier out in this humidity.
Avery lingers by the G Wagon. It has to belong to her father. It’s a beast of a thing, meant for off-road shit. What is she thinking, driving that here?
“Did you lose your other car?”
“Nah. I returned it to the priest I borrowed it from.” Avery purses her lips and I get a flicker of the woman she used to be, and not just before all this started—before she put me in jail. That Avery. “I gave a hundred grand to the church for their troubles. Think that’s a good enough tip?”
“I think in churches they call it a tithe. And no, I don’t. A hundred thousand is nothing to a Capulet.”
“This city is nothing to a Capulet right now.” Avery tips her head back and drinks in the sun. “That’s why I’m skipping town. And one other reason.”
“What’s that?”
She opens her eyes again and I’m swallowed up in all that they contain. I could have survived a long time in captivity with those eyes. I did survive a long time in captivity with only her eyes to remind me of the outside world, of better things. I did. We both did.
“You promised me a trip to Joshua Tree to see the closest thing to heaven.”
I told her about that place when she was delirious. When she was hallucinating. When we were both skating the sharp edge of madness. She remembers that?
It breaks my heart that she remembers, stomps on it, but there’s nothing for it but to climb into the car. Avery gets in next to me in a waft of shampoo and some kind of perfume that makes me think of linen and honeysuckle. She smells like hope, and I refuse to entertain the possibility that there is none.
“Hate to break it to you, but I doubt we’ll get further than the freeway entrance. I’m surprised the alarm hasn’t sounded already.”
“Alarm?”
I hoist my foot onto the dash, rolling up my jeans. I tap the monitor cutting into my ankle. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm wearing an ankle monitor, Aves. I can't piss off the side of that balcony without it going off, let alone join you on a road trip. Much as I'd love to."
Avery smiles smugly. "In case you hadn't noticed, that ankle monitor stopped working about ten minutes ago. At least, it should have, for the amount of money I just used to bribe a federal judge to disarm it."
She pulls out a pair of scissors and a fuck-off knife. “I didn’t know what would be strong enough to get it off,” she says breezily, handing me the weapons. “Have at it.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded. “For real?”
She grins. “For real. That thing is dead. And your bail conditions have been changed. Judge Rosenbaum has a nice new car, a trip to the Bahamas, and you have no more restrictions on your bail. Except that you can’t leave the state of California. He wouldn’t budge on that, but I think we can work with it.”
“He got rid of all the conditions? The ankle monitor? Being a mile away from you at all times?”
“All of those.” Her grin fades slightly as she looks at the road ahead. “The major problem we have now is my family. They won’t stop until they find me. So we have to go somewhere off-grid. A commune in Joshua Tree sounds pretty far off the grid.”
Hope and caffeine make my heart pound. Is this real? After everything being so impossible, could it really be this easy? “Yeah,” I say slowly. “No cell reception, no roads, and no cops who can access the federal land. It’s pretty much perfect.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Avery says, sounding relieved. “Because believe me, they won’t stop looking.”
I believe her. And I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure we aren’t separated ever again.
“You want me to help you with that thing?” Avery asks, gesturing to the monitor. I shake my head. “Nah. I got it. “
Surprisingly, the scissors do the trick. They’re sharp, and the plastic eventually buckles when I hack through it with them. I laugh, my bare ankle almost scandalous.
“Shit. Let’s get out of here before I wake up from this dream.”
I reach for my seat belt, and the buckle slides home with a scrape and a click. Avery reaches for my hand and squeezes.
“Where to?” She flips her sunglasses back down over her eyes and peers at the traffic, the car roaring to life.
“Get on the freeway.” I toss the ankle monitor out of my window, hearing it drop heavily onto the road below, and let myself relax for the first time in what feels like ten years. “Head south.”
CHAPTER FORTY
AVERY
The farther we get from San Francisco, the easier it is to relax. Is it too easy? Probably. I should assume that enemies are everywhere. But with my hands on the wheel and Rome in the passenger seat, I can’t help myself. This vehicle was built for rough roads. I might not have been born that way, but I’ve been forged into it now.
We’re rolling through a stretch of land that’s something between field and desert, the tall grasses petering out. The radio plays softly. New pop hits. The music doesn’t matter, and I’m not picky. Hearing new music is a pleasure I obviously took for granted before. Driving a car? I definitely took that for granted. Driving with Rome? I never knew. I never knew how good it could be.
He stretches in the passenger seat, his back cracking. Even the slightest glimpse of him beside me gives me a burst of pure pleasure. He looks fucking phenomenal. We’ve been kidnapped, we’ve been tortured, he’s been in jail...and he still looks good to me. It’s the life in him, I think. The fire. Rome is fierce. A serial killer couldn’t beat that out of him or shoot it out of him or surgically remove it. They tried, didn’t they? There’s a horror in surviving what we did, but there’s a smug satisfaction in it, too. We’re still here, still standing. And we’re getting the fuck away from our toxic lives back in that godforsaken place, even if it’ll all catch up with us eventually.
Rome leans forward. “Pull over. There’s a road coming up.”
“Road is an overstatement.” It is—this thing is more of a gravel track. The sun bleeds out over the horizon, going from orange to a deep red. We haven’t seen another vehicle for miles–taking back streets and roads less travelled has been an unspoken understanding since we left the freeway– but I use my turn signal anyway and trundle over the rough edge of the road. “Why, what do you need? There aren’t any trees.”
“Who cares about trees?” Rome raises his eyebrows. “What the hell do you need trees for?”
“I thought you might have to pee.”
“I’m fine. But you’re not. You’re about to fall asleep. It’s time for us to switch it up.”
“I am very fine, thanks. What makes you think I’m not fine?”
Rome reaches over and pushes my hair away from my face, and at that moment it occurs to me that I’m practically melted into the leather seat. Me and the seat, we’re one. My arms are both locked in place and strangely loose on the wheel. Also, I can’t remember the last several miles. Oops.
“C’mon, Aves. It’s my turn.”
We both get out and my lungs are happy for the dry, hot evening air. It’s soothing compared to the blasting A/C. The sky is wide open, out here away from the city. It’s just us and the rising moon and the fading sun. I breathe deeply, taking a moment to soak this in as the sun sinks lower. Eventually it disappears and the stars pop into being, one by one.
I stretch and bend, touching my toes. Take a few steps around to the front of the car. Bend again. Rome’s right. I should get out and stretch more. But who has time to get out and stretch when you’re fleeing from the SFPD, an uptight family, and a serial killer?
Rome appears in front of the SUV. “What are you doing?”
“Stretching.”
I turn toward the open desert and be
nd again.
Rome lets out a groan, his hands coming down on my hips. I chose a sundress because they’re comfortable. It also gives him easy access. He puts his hand right underneath the fabric, and my breath hitches in my throat. A soft breeze swirls the fabric over my skin. My skin, his hands.
“Does this turn you on?” It’s meant as a joke, but my voice comes out huskier than I intended. I straighten up.
Rome doesn’t let go.
He pulls me in closer, pinning me to his chest. His heart thuds. It reminds me of the drums back in high school. I didn’t give a shit about high school in the way that only a Capulet can, but some things stuck with me. One of those things was the drumline at the football games. That’s what Rome’s heart feels like now. There’s nothing else to compete with it here except my own heart.
“Everything about you turns me on. But it doesn’t just turn me on, Avery. It sets me on fire.”
The only thing that could make this moment more otherworldly would be a shooting star appearing at exactly this moment, but it doesn’t.
What happens instead is that Rome turns me around in his arms and crushes his mouth to mine. It’s a perfect, desperate kiss, like he’s been waiting all his life to do this. Like every moment from the hotel to now has been his entire existence. My body leans into his, trying to find purchase on hard muscle and bone. I find it. I find it in his hair, on his shoulders, at his waist. I let my hands go free. He bites, he sucks, he pushes his tongue into my mouth. I feel this kiss everywhere. I feel it between my legs and in the tips of my toes. It explodes inside my chest, fireworks that light up my entire being. Rome Montague is the match, I am the flint, and together fire consumes us.
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